Rainy Day Thoughts

La Niña

I don’t understand the ecological or meteorological reasons behind it, but we’re smack in the middle of the La Niña phenomenon here (the southern hemisphere’s version of El Niño), and it sucks. It’s been nice to avoid the 100-plus temperatures, but day after day of rain is slowly driving me mad. It’s hard to do laundry, because even if it’s sunny in the morning, two hours later it can be pouring rain. I can’t run, or ride my bike (see below), or even just take a walk really because the dirt roads are literally mud roads right now. Any activity planned (and this month there are few) is subject to be cancelled for rain. Today it’s been raining for nine hours without stop, and while it’s fun to play “rained in” for a little while, that gets old pretty quickly. Today, for example, I have
-slept in til 9, a rare accomplishment
-eaten breakfast, including coffee, because it’s a mere 72’ now – chilly!
-made little alphabet cutouts for kids to trace, and a cute box to store them in made out of an old box of wine
-watched the movie Before Sunset with spanish subtitles
-watched “the making of before sunset”
-watched several Seinfelt episodes with spanish subtitles, with a glass of wine (why not?)
-solved one Sudoku, level medium
-eaten the last of mom’s twizzlers and some very salty popcorn
-begrudgingly trudged out in the rain to pee and brush my teeth (never let it be said I’m not a role model for the community when it comes to dental hygiene)
-made some delicious “unbaked oatmeal cookies” and shared the recipe with my friend Sarah, who’s also rained in
-burned 3 cd’s of Jon Stewart’s America The Book for my friend Kate
-pondered what to do with toilet paper rolls and other recycled materials, still thinking about it...
-got the high scores on Minesweeper (granted, not a huge achievement since I’m the only one who’s played on my laptop)
-journaled a bit, sent various text messages despite being almost out of “minutes”, stared out the window at the impressive flooded street
-peed in a bucket when I didn’t feel like going outside in the rain
-tweezed my eyebrows to near perfection
And it’s only 3:30!!! What more excitement is to come? I literally can’t imagine. I suppose I haven’t written letters yet, but I feel like all they’d say is “it’s raining.”

The Challenge
In December, the volunteers in the department of Concepcion will be having our bimonthly meeting the site of Siobhan, who’s about to finish her service. It should be a fun weekend, complete with despedida, or farewell party, and plenty of beer. The problem? This campo girl lives TWENTY KILOMETERS from the city of Concepcion, and there’s no bus to her site, so we’ll be BIKING there. Remember how much I hate biking? Well, I still do, but am determined not to wimp out. I already practiced the other day, riding a whole kilometer to a meeting at school, arriving sweaty and pissed off. I was going to practice today, 30 minutes as the goal, but it’s not my fault it’s raining. And tomorrow the roads will still be a mess, but Saturday I swear I will continue my training. Twenty kilometers!!